wefalck

For put squares (or hexagons) onto the end of round material, there is the classical solution watchmakers use (for the watch winding stems), the 'double roller filing rest'. Here is a picture from the Internet (as I didn't have a picture of mine to hand): Source: http://www.myford-lathes.com/ The above is shop-made, but in the old days watchmakers lathes came with them. You also need a way to index the headstock of the lathe (an indexing plate was integrated into the pulley of watchmakers lathes). A more artisanl way is to find a pin-vise with a square nut, hold the nut down onto the work-table and try to hold the file as horizontal as you can while filing. It is a good idea to use a file with a 'safe-edge' for this, i.e. a file that does not have teeth on the narrow side. I have done dozens of square and hexagonal (with a hexagonal nutted pin-vice) like this, before I had a lathe.

I am making 'ropes' on my ropewalk from fly-tying thread. The the finest (16/0) gives a rope of about 0.04 mm diameter. This thread is available in many different colours, e.g. silvery grey for steel-wire, black, and beige. Check out the building-log for my Zuiderzee-Botter, where I used these ropes. They can be stiffened with clear varnish - better than using glue, because the varnish can be softened with the appropriate solvent (not acrylic varnish !). The rope coils etc. on the botter-model are shaped with varnish. Such rope would be an alternative to the twisted wire in the method described above.

Though a tempting idea, you will find sooner or later that combination machines are a pain, at least for those who regularly use the machines. Often one has to perform turning and milling operations on the same part, which means that you have to break down one set up for the sake of another. With time you will get fed up by this, because you not only have to reconfigure the machine, but also to adjust it etc. Such machines are good for emergency repairs or such, say on a ship, where you wouldn't need a full-blown workshop.

It is dead easy and quite cheap to find copper wire down to 0.05 mm and molybdenum wire down to 0.03 mm diameter on ebay - bought recently a whole batch from various Chines sources. They often deliver within a few days, at least here in Europe. wires.co.uk also sells pre-tinned copper wire that might come handy here. Not as cheap as simple copper wire.

To elaborate a bit: - take copper or molybdenum (easy to find on ebay and stiffer than copper) wires of appropriate diameter and twist to lengths together, this is your (wire) rope; drill two holes of the distance of the blocks into a waste piece of wood and insert two pins of the diameter of your blocks; wind the wire rope you made around them to simulate the tackle - one end will begin at the lower block and the other end will run across the rollers on the davit; take the wire off the jig and stick paper roundels at the appropriate place to simulate the blocks; for double blocks you would actually need three roundels each; the top block will also need a short piece of wire or a loop attached to the davit; you can now attach the whole assembly to the davit.

Do you have a copy of Lloyd McCaffery's book 'Shipbuilding in Miniature' ? He describes, together with a picture, how he constructs such tackles from twisted wire. The rope made from wire is shaped around a rig and paper discs representing blocks are glued to the sides. The whole thing than forms a more or less rigid assembly that is installed at the desired place.

Interesting design and mechanically quite complex for something installed on the deck of a ship. The design seems to be somehow inspired by the steam-pump design for fire-engines, which had to be very compact. The cross-head there slides in frame perpendicular to the piston rod. I wondering whether the elaborate cams drive two-stage pumps: suction pumps become very ineffective say above 7 m or so; by dividing the height over which the water is to be lifted into two stages, you can achieve greater lifting heights. The cams would help timing the movements of the pistons. Just some wild ideas ...

Nice solution indeed, it looks much more ship-shape now 👍

Thanks, that confirmed my assumptions.

Some sort of wooden bolsters left and right atop the holes might do the job. Isn't there any respective information on the prototype ?

That would make it even worse, the two stream systems would mix in a chaotic way ...

Perhaps you can post a picture of your problem ? Using a jig, as Pat suggested, is a good idea. One then can stabilise the assembled tackle with clear varnish and install it as a unit.

I am not commenting on the workmanship, it speaks for itself ... However, something looks odd to me - I am sure it is according to the plans, namely that there is a screw-well in front of the rudder, while this seems to be twin-screwed vessel. Such a screw-well would cause a lot of turbulences and cross-flows in front the rudder. Is there any rationale, why this was designed that way ? One explanation, I could think of myself is that improves the turning capability - for the same reason tugs had cut large openings cut into the 'dead-wood' in front of the screw. Any thoughts on this ?

Cute little model to come 👍 Just wondering, why you tore out the bulkheads in areas where they would not be visible anyway ? As others commented already, it is a pity that most of the internal structure put in later will be hidden.

That's Dutch style, the setting-up of the forestay. However, I had exactly the same thought as 'druxey'. The Dutch drill(ed) holes through the stem (which is normally then wider at the top as for those of other nations), which is akin to a fixed dead-eye. I don't comment on the quality of the work, it speaks for itself ...

Both, the sail-plan as well as the underwater body have centres of gravity that shift with the ship heeling and the number and position of sails. As all sailors know, you can change a ships tendency to turn into the wind or away from it by adding or taking away sails at different positions of the rig. This is why certain sails may not be set under certain conditions. Also, on a square-rigged ship certain sails under certain conditions will blanket other sails. In fact, they would not be of use or even detrimental due to increased turbulence and friction. Thus, you often see the main-sail being clewed up or furled in order to not blanket the fore-sail.

A bottom speed of 8000 rpm seems to me also way to fast for brass. I would think 4000 rpm should be the maximum. For wood and two- or single-lip-endmills the 8000 rpm would be ok. Just wondering, whether the bearings on the spindle are actually rated for such high rpms ?

One thing to consider is that many milling machines do not have a lever-actuated quill. If you need to drill many holes, cranking the mill had up and down could be pain. On the other hand, a mill is likely to be more accurate than a drill press, which could be important for using flimsy drills below 0.5 mm diameter. Of course, it is a question of space and budget, but these drill-press stands sold for Proxxon or Dremel etc. hand-held drills all seem to be quite flimsy things without much options for adjusting bearing surfaces to take out wobble. I think there are adapter rings for some of these machines to bring them up to the standard 43 mm throat diameter of DIY power-drills. You then can use them in DIY drill-presses that are much more solid and can be fiddled with to be more accurate. If your budget allows for a mill, there are also so-called 'sensitive drilling attachments', which are essentially a sleeve on an arbor that holds a small drill chuck and can be moved up and down like a quill. These allows to rapidly drill small holes. However, I do not have any personal experience with these.

Wish I had even the space for the bandsaw ...

Terredo navalis is not a worm, but a mollusc, a mussel-species, btw. The material under the coppering was felt, soaked in (wood) tar. There have been (partially) clinker-built naval cutters in Great Britain. Unless one knows more about the provenance of the model in the museum, it will be impossible to say, whether it is a correct representation of the vessel in question. If the model was built in the 19th century, then it would have been built after it was captured by the Swedish. Why would one do that and on what basis ? Is there anything on her in the Swedish archives ? One would need to research more on the actual vessel in order to find out, whether it could have been clinker-built.

As a matter of fact, clinkering, being the traditional Germanic way of construction, has been much more and longer prevalent than many people are aware of. Today we think of Viking ships and then modern rowing boats. However, the Dutch built major ships with clinkered bottoms well into the 17th century and many smaller vessels were partially clinkered well into the 19th century. Therefore, the original question is not quite out of place. Perhaps one should turn the question around and ask, whether any vessel meant to venture into waters infested with borers would have been built clinker, or not rather carvel for easy application of the copper sheathing. As noted above, applying copper sheathing to a clinker hull would be extremely labour-intensive and would require very careful work to ensure a good closure of the seams. Even applying the underlying felt-layer would be labour-intensive to install. So, this would just not be an economic proposition. By the time coppering was in common use, the technology of carvel-building was well-established all around Northern Europe. So there would have been no reason to built a vessel destined to sail in warmer water in clinker-fashion.

The point is that a Russian clinker ship from the Eastern Baltic is unlikely to be coppered, unless it was meant for overseas trade. The Baltic there is almost fresh water. There would also be a high risk of ripping off the coppering, if there was any ice.

I gather it could be, but never was. Clinkered boats normally did no venture into waters with Terredo navalis at least at a time, when coppering was used.

Not sure, what 'white stuff' and 'black stuff' actually refers to. However, the bottom of wooden ships had to be protected from various environmental effects and threats. These effects and threats depend on the type of environment the ships is operating in. Wood is degrading when exposed to (salt) water and various kinds of aquatic plants and animals like to attach themselves to ships (fouling) - their movement provides a steady oxygen and nutrient supply. It was discovered long ago that (wood) tar does preserve the wood and also has some antifouling properties. However, the tar does not deter terredo navalis, the mollusc that loves to dig its way into wooden structures. Terredo navalis up to the late 20th century did not occur north of Channel and, hence, protection with tar was sufficient for ships operating in the Baltic and the North Sea. Most small ships and boats in these waters would have been seen with black bottoms. In waters south of the Channel some more serious protection was needed and various concoctions were brewed together at various times. A major ingredient in many of these was lime or chalk, which has anti-fouling properties due to its high pH-values (around 10). Such high pH values are not normally tolerated by plants and animals, so they stay away from it. Due to the chalk or lime contents, the bottoms would have had a sort of white appearance. I am not aware of 'paints' being used on ships bottoms before the arrival of iron ships around the middle of the 19th century. It would seem conceivable, however, that a lime-based anti-fouling concoction be coloured by adding iron-oxide with a view to make it look like coppering, which attains under water a reddish dull-brownish colour. This could explain the colour of the model above. Another explanation is that the paint was added during a misguided 'restoration' effort at a time, when ships' bottoms typically were some sort of iron-oxide red, which in itself originally probably mimicked the colour of coppering.

Ed, your earlier post made me unsure about my own logic, as indeed one 'vector' of the increased diameter of the strand points into the axial direction of the rope. However, I think that the increased diameter of the strands leads to a subtle steepening of the helix and, therefore, to a shortening of the rope.